Pillar of Fire Page 37

  He ventured a very great liberty. He took her hands in his. “Lady,” he said. “Look at me. You’re shaken beyond bearing. I know it, we all do. But Egypt won’t wait for you to recover, nor will any of the lands about it. Egypt needs you to be strong.”

  “I have always been strong,” she said in a still, cold voice.

  “And maybe you’re tired of it,” he said. “Any woman would be. Any man, too. You lost a husband whom you loved. You—”

  “You never loved him,” she said. “He was nothing to you.”

  “Lady,” said Horemheb. “Lady, he was my king.”

  “You were contemptuous of him. Weak child, you thought him. Vaunting boy. Useless in war, interfering when he were best to remain at home and leave the fighting to those who were fit to do it.”

  Horemheb did not seem appalled by the queen’s quiet venom. Nofret wondered if anything at all disturbed him. “Lady, you wrong me,” he said, “and you wrong him. He was a good fighting man.”

  “But a terrible general. He was, wasn’t he? He had to lie to have a triumph in Egypt. He lost the war in Asia. You could have won it.”

  Horemheb drew a slow breath: Nofret saw how his breast lifted, then sank again. With it he seemed to draw in resolve. “Lady, if you want to hear the truth, yes, I could have won that war—and would have, if he hadn’t run home too soon. He knew no better. He was only a boy, and untried; but he was king.”

  “You want to be king, don’t you?” She leaned forward, setting face to face. “You think you could be better than any who’s ruled since my grandfather died.”

  “What a man wants, or thinks he wants, is of no worth if he’s not born to the proper eminence.”

  Ah, thought Nofret: a crack in the armor. A suggestion of bitterness.

  Ankhesenamon perhaps could not perceive it. She had never been less than royal. She had never known what it was to want to rise higher than the station the gods had given her. She said, “A man need not be born to kingship. He can marry it.”

  Horemheb’s eyes sharpened. “Are you saying that I can try?”

  She tensed to surge to her feet, but he held her hands too tightly; he trapped her. She spoke through clenched teeth. “Why did you come here tonight?”

  “I came to comfort you,” he said.

  “Ah,” she said with a twist of the mouth. “Comfort. I know that comfort. Why should I want it?”

  “Because,” he said, “you need a strong man. You’ve never had one, have you? Your first husband was too god-ridden, your second too young. You’re not the child you were when you married each of them. You’re a woman now. Isn’t it time you had a man beside you?”

  “So I shall have,” she said. “I shall have the Lord Ay.”

  “Your grandfather.” Horemheb shook his head. “He’s a good man, but he’s old. There’s no sap left in him.”

  “He might surprise you,” said Ankhesenamon.

  “I doubt it,” Horemheb said. “You’re thinking he’s safe, aren’t you? He’s too old to trouble you in the bedchamber. He has another wife to oblige him if by some chance the urge strikes. Don’t you wonder what it will be like, having no one to keep you warm of nights?”

  “The nights are often too warm in our country,” she said.

  Horemheb laughed, a short bark with little mirth in it. “I should take you to Asia. There’s snow on the mountain peaks there. Do you know what that is?”

  “I know what it’s said to be,” she said. “I have no desire to see it.”

  “What, none? Haven’t you ever wanted to travel?”

  “I’ve traveled much,” she said, “throughout the Two Lands.”

  “You have an answer for everything,” he said. He seemed amused by it. “You know of course that your would-be consort is old. He’ll die. Then who will be king?”

  “I’m sure you think that it will be you.”

  “There is no heir. Will you try to give him one?”

  “If I am not capable,” she said with utmost steadiness, “of bearing a son, or indeed any child who will live and grow strong, then what makes you think that I can give you an heir, either?”

  “Maybe,” he said, “because I’m not your close kin. I’ve seen it with horses and with hunting dogs. You can breed strength to strength and beget greater strength, but weakness crossed on weakness weakens the line to breaking.

  “Are you calling me weak?”

  “I am saying that your line should look beyond itself if it’s to continue. It will end, lady, whatever you do, when Lord Ay is dead.”

  “Then you may claim me,” she said, “if you can.”

  “I’d rather not wait,” he said. “Egypt needs strength now. It needs a man who is young, who is vigorous, who can both fight in battle and lead an army to victory. Hatti has seen that we’re weak. It will act on it, you can be sure.”

  “But,” she said, “Lord Ay has been a soldier and a general. And he’ll have you to fight in Asia for him. What do we lose if I send you away?”

  “Time,” he said. “Wisdom. A chance at a son of your own body, to hold in your arms.”

  He had struck home: Nofret saw the quiver in her. But she was set against him. She turned her face away. “Go,” she said, remote and chill, as if his hands were not gripping her still, and his body barring her escape.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to go. Your loyalty becomes you, but it’s not wise. Be a queen now, and think. What is best for Egypt?”

  “It is best,” she said, “that you leave me.”

  His patience snapped so suddenly that it took Nofret by surprise. He surged up, and the queen with him, drawn as if she weighed nothing. He set her on her feet with a jolt that must have rattled her teeth in her skull, and set his mouth on hers. It made Nofret think of a lion going for the throat of its prey: so fast, so fierce.

  She tensed to spring, but there was nowhere to go. Her lady was caught. Nofret had no weapon, no strength or skill to set her free. She could only watch, poised, alert for any opening.

  Ankhesenamon twisted in protest, but he held her fast. The growl of his voice was like a lion’s too, but with words in it, words that must have terrified the woman in his grasp. “Little minx. Little lioness. You can hate me, you can fear me, but you will give way to me. You know there’s no one more fit to claim you.”

  “There is,” she said, no more than a gasp. “And I will have him.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  She laughed. It was cruel, and not wise: his face suffused with anger. “I, a fool? Then what are you? You have no right to claim me. You’re no more than a commoner. How dare you dream that you can be king and god?”

  “Maybe the gods dare for me,” he said. He sounded as cold as she, but his face had grown no calmer and no paler. “I will be king, lady. Of that you can be certain.”

  “But not,” she said, “while I live to resist you.”

  He looked at her, level and long. The color had left his cheeks at last, left them pale beneath the weathering, and very still. “So you say now,” he said. “What will you say when your so-safe Lord Ay is dead?”

  “That you killed him,” she said, “as you killed two kings before him.”

  “I won’t need to do that,” he said. “Time and the gods will do it for me.”

  “Then you did kill them.” Ankhesenamon caught him in a moment of distraction: twisted free and escaped to the inner door.

  Foolish, Nofret thought, if he was minded to pursue her; though at least Nofret could be a shield for her there. A bit of handy rape might be just what a soldier thought advisable to subdue a stubborn woman—but he would have to begin with the slave. The queen would have time to escape.

  But Horemheb stood where the queen had left him. He was astonished, maybe, or appalled.

  “You killed them,” said Ankhesenamon. “You did. I see it in your eyes. You won’t kill a third king. I’ll see that you don’t.”

  “How? By killing me first?”

  Sh
e laughed, high and a little wild. “Oh, no! I’ll let you be. We need you, after all, to protect our lands in Asia. But we know you. We know what you want. I’m on guard. I’ll defend us all against you.”

  “You’re mad,” he said: Nofret’s thought exactly.

  “Probably,” said Ankhesenamon. “Madness can see the truth sometimes, if the gods guide it. I’ll be sane when you’ve gone out of my sight.”

  “I’ll have you in the end,” he said. He was a soldier: he knew when to leave the field.

  Ankhesenamon stood immobile until he was gone. Then, and only then, she answered him. “I think not,” she said.

  Forty-One

  After Horemheb was gone, Ankhesenamon paced for a long while, twisting her hands and muttering to herself. She looked quite lunatic. Nofret could not persuade her to stop or rest, or even to slow her perambulations.

  When at last she did stop, it was to smile in a way that chilled Nofret. “A strong man,” she said. “A man who can fight. Who can defend Egypt.” Her smile widened. She darted toward the clothing-chest that stood by the door, and from it snatched a mantle. Nofret tried to catch her as she ran past, but caught only the edge of the cloak, which slipped from her fingers.

  The queen went swiftly, not running, but not walking, either. Nofret had to trot to keep pace. There was no use in trying to pull her back. She was like one of her chariot mares with the bit in its teeth, running blindly where her will bade her run.

  She went to the house of scribes, to the place where they slept, and roused a startled, blinking, shaven-headed old man from what no doubt was well-earned rest. “Bring me a man who writes the words of Hatti,” she said imperiously.

  The scribe was taken by surprise, but his wits were quick. He rose from his pallet, wrapped a length of linen about his middle, bowed to the floor and said, “Come, I’ll fetch Meryre.”

  Meryre was a younger man with a long lantern jaw and world-weary eyes. He reminded Nofret forcibly of the lost Akhenaten.

  Ankhesenamon seemed not to think so, or not to notice. Likely she did not even see him except as a shadow and a pen. “Write a letter for me,” she said.

  The man did not answer, only bowed and reached for the palette and pen that were by his bed. He brought out and opened a new roll of papyrus, spreading it on his knees. Nofret could not tell if he was mute or merely taciturn. When he was ready, he poised pen above papyrus and waited.

  Ankhesenamon spoke quickly, as if the words she spoke were learned by heart—and yet she could only have conceived them since she left her chambers. A god guided her, or perhaps something worse than a god.

  “Write to the king of Hatti,” she said. “Write well and fair. Here is what the queen of Egypt says to the one who calls himself King of Kings:

  “My husband is dead. I have no son. But you, it is said, have many sons. Give me a son of yours, and I will make him my husband. Never will I choose a servant of mine to be my husband—no, never, for I trust none of them. Save me, king of Hatti, for I am afraid.”

  The scribe’s pen scratched out the words in the Egyptian picture-writing. Then, expressionless, he rendered them in the style that Hatti had taken over from the old peoples of Asia, the swift stab of wedge-writing that was best done with stylus in wet clay. So it would be, once it was completed, so that it could be sent to Hatti.

  If it was sent. Nofret had heard it, therefore she had to believe it. Ankhesenamon was doing a thing that no queen of Egypt had done before: she was asking a king of a foreign country to send her a son to be her consort. Nor was it any king or any country. It was the very country that had been, indeed still was, Egypt’s enemy in Asia.

  She seemed oblivious to the enormity of what she did. She watched the letter written in both Egyptian and Hittite, and saw it limned in clay, too. Then she said to the scribe, “I need a messenger, one who is swift and safe and secret. He’ll be paid in gold and in royal favor when he comes back with the Hittite prince.”

  The scribe bowed and did as she bade him. Nofret wondered what he thought of it all. His face betrayed nothing. He did not try to dissuade her, or beg her to reconsider, or at least to wait until morning.

  He went and fetched the messenger while she waited. She gave the man the sealed tablets from her own hand and bade him give them at whatever cost into the hands of the king of Hatti himself. Both scribe and messenger obeyed her, blindly as it seemed, and without thought.

  It was all mad. It was like a nightmare, a dream of perfect illogic, no reason in it, and silent figures moving as they were told, without question. Morning would find Nofret in her bed and none of it true.

  She felt very much awake. The tiredness that dragged at her bones was real. So was the dread in her. “You can’t go this far,” she said to her lady as they stood in the scribe’s sleeping-room. He was gone with the messenger. She did not know if he would be back. Maybe not while the queen occupied his cell. “You can’t hate the general so much. This is betrayal of your own kingdom.”

  “It is protection,” said Ankhesenamon with awful serenity. “You don’t see, do you? And you a Hittite. I thought better of you.”

  “I’ve been in Egypt too long,” said Nofret. “Tell me what I should see.”

  “It’s simple,” Ankhesenamon said. “Too simple almost; I nearly missed seeing it. I can hardly fault you for thinking me reft of my wits.”

  “I know you are,” said Nofret. “You’re making no sense at all.”

  “I’m making a great deal of sense. Think, Nofret. Lord Ay isn’t safe if Horemheb sees him crowned king. He’ll be killed as the others were. But if he’s not crowned, if another is—a warrior of a warrior race, raised to be a king in his own country—then we have what Horemheb wants: a soldier king. And more than that. Who is the enemy we most fear? Hatti. But Hatti will have a prince on the throne of Egypt. Egypt will be safe from Hatti, and Ay from Horemheb, and I . . . I will have a strong husband as our so-wise general has advised.”

  “I think,” said Nofret carefully, “that Egypt will never accept a foreigner on its throne, even if that foreigner marries a bearer of the king-right. Better a commoner than that, Egypt will say.”

  “Egypt will accept whatever I bid it accept,” said Ankhesenamon. Her arrogance was as perfect as her father’s had ever been.

  “Of course,” she said after a pause, “we can’t allow this to be known till the prince is here and ready to take my hand in marriage. Ay will have to go on thinking that he’ll be king. He’ll open the mouth of my husband who is dead. He’ll play the part of the heir. But I’ll put off the wedding. I’ll plead exhaustion and excessive grief. I’ll go to Memphis, I think, and leave him in Thebes to look after the Upper Kingdom. When the river’s flood has been and gone, then, I’ll tell him, we can marry.”

  “Oh?” demanded Nofret. “And what’s to keep Horemheb from killing the old man while you’re away from him in Memphis?”

  “He won’t do that,” said Ankhesenamon. “He’ll wait till Ay is king. I’m protecting him, you see? Horemheb likes to kill kings. He won’t kill a lord of the kingdom who hasn’t yet worn the Two Crowns. And meanwhile Hatti will be sending a prince to save us all.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Nofret said. She wanted to seize her lady and shake her, but that would not have been wise: it would have been too much like Horemheb.

  Nofret had no desire to confirm her in her lunacy. She tried words instead, and the force of reason. “Hatti may think you’ve set a trap. And what if Horemheb gets wind of it?”

  “He will not,” said Ankhesenamon. “I will not allow it.” She swept her mantle about her. “Come. It’s late. I think, now I’ve done what’s needful, that I can sleep.”

  “Now you’ve done what’s absolutely mad,” muttered Nofret. If Ankhesenamon heard, she gave no sign.

  oOo

  Most likely, Nofret thought, Hatti would not respond at all. Or if it did, it would be to refuse what anyone could see was an act of perfect folly.

  I
n any case it would be days, weeks, before the messenger could reasonably be expected to reach Hatti, and weeks more before a reply could come. In that time Ankhesenamon exercised the royal art of patience. Maybe, if fate was kind, she had forgotten her night’s lapse from reason; but Nofret set no hope in that. There was too much to remind her.

  Nebkheperure Tutankhamon, beloved of Amon, protected of Horus, Great House, Pharaoh, Lord of the Two Lands, king in Egypt, went to his tomb in the west of Thebes with such state as haste and a queen’s distraction could muster. All the great ones who could be in Thebes went in processional behind the king’s bier, in a wailing of women and a great proclamation of the king’s deeds and his virtues. They began in the eastern city, passed through it with the people following, gaping and wailing and, if they were devoted, smearing their faces with the mud of mourning.

  The queen herself walked behind the bier with its yoke of white she-cattle like images of horn-browed Hathor. She was all alone, her face unpainted except with earth, her breast bare, her gown torn as grief demanded. She allowed herself the cries of mourning and the upflinging of hands, the rending of cheeks and breasts, all the excesses that queenly restraint heretofore had forbidden.

  At the river’s bank the funeral boats were waiting. No other boats sailed the river of Thebes that day, by the queen’s own order; only those that served the king’s last journey. He rode in his catafalque with the yoked cattle and a single oarsman and a company of women wailing the dirge, his barge drawn behind a many-oared ship. The rest embarked on the other boats, crossing the river in their sorrowful fleet.

  Ankhesenamon cried the words that set them on their way, words as old as Egypt and as young as her grief: “O my brother, O my husband, O my sweet friend! Stay, rest with me. Leave me not alone; do not cross the river. O you oarsmen, why such haste? Let him linger awhile. You may return to your homes, but he must go to the house of eternity.”

  For response she gained nothing but the striking off of the boat. The last of her cry was wordless, a long wail of loss. Her women held her while she wept, until she quieted; until they had come to the western bank.